"Amazon employee Rejinaldo Rosales used to wander stacks of shelves to pick up merchandise for orders before finally returning to his station to place them in bins and send them to their next stop."

"But this summer, squat orange robots, called Kiva, began zooming around the shelves instead, picking up goods and carrying them to Rosales at his station. The result? What used to take hours of walking can happen in mere minutes instead." 11-14

"Kamen sees the lack of appreciation for science in America as a problem - but that's not to say he's calling for a revamping of the educational system. In his view, more teachers, textbooks, PCs, and Internet access won't get students jazzed about learning. 'They need to have access to challenging, hands-on projects that result in a tangible product' - like building robots. And they need role models - engineers - to assist them." 03-06

"TIME's three-day forum on the Future of Life ended on a note of extravagant promises about a coming century of startling advances — in personalized medicine, including life spans well beyond 100 years, increasingly smart computer programs that will emulate biological processes, new genetically engineered sources of energy and outreaches into space that will take both humans and robots far from their home planet." 02-10